If an old grenade or bomb is found somewhere, the ammunition recovery service will be called to help. But now major tasks are waiting for the employees: the clearing of huge areas is pending in the coming years.
Mellenthin (dpa/mv) – The ammunition salvage service MV looks with respect to the coming years, when numerous contaminated areas will have to be cleared. In Lübtheen, where almost 1,000 hectares of forest were on fire for almost a week in the summer of 2019, the start should be made, as the head of the ammunition recovery service, Robert Mollitor, said on Wednesday. According to estimates, there are around 2,600 tons of ammunition on an area of ??around 300 hectares near Lübtheen that has to be disposed of. “This is the most polluted area in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania,” said Mollitor during a visit by Interior Minister Christian level (SPD) to the ammunition dismantling plant in Mellenthin (Vorpommern-Greifswald district).
It’s not the ammunition itself that inspires respect, it’s the sheer mass. “We are ten times the previous year’s average,” emphasized Mollitor. Therefore, the process from the search and recovery to the destruction of the ammunition must be planned perfectly. At the same time, the number of employees will be noticeably increased to 18. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania there are a total of 16 such areas as in Lübtheen, which are heavily contaminated with ammunition residues. “We really have something to do there,” emphasized Mollitor.
The federal government wants to rid its properties throughout Germany of old ammunition. According to earlier information, around 190 million euros are planned for the clearance of polluted federal properties in the north-east in the coming years. Of this, a good 60 million euros are to be made available over the next five years.
According to the information, the ammunition recovery service is responsible for the disposal of all explosive ordnance or weapons of war. According to Mollitor, this starts with the cannonball filled with black powder from the Thirty Years’ War and extends to the disposal of ammunition, for example at military training areas.
Mollitor appealed to everyone in the country to call the police or law enforcement agencies if they found objects that could possibly be old weapons such as grenades and not to touch the objects. The risk of injury is too great. The Munitions Recovery Service always has teams on standby to deal with such items.